Orlando City academy coaches Jeff Negalha, Darren Powell leaving club

The changes at Orlando City continued to reverberate within the club this week.

The top two coaches in Orlando City’s academy have left the club, according to sources. Jeff Negalha and Darren Powell, who were both brought to Orlando by former general manager Paul McDonough, will be moving on to new jobs.

Powell will be the head coach of the new USL team in San Antonio that is set to begin play in March 2016. Powell came to Orlando City from Elon, where he had been the head coach for nine years.

Negalha, a former UNC assistant coach, will return to the college game, where he was considered one of the country's top assistant coaches. He has accepted an assistant coaching position on former Wake Forest and Timbers II coach Jay Vidovich’s staff at Pitt.

The academy was a major focus for McDonough upon taking the top role with Orlando City in 2014. Bringing in two highly-regarded college coaches was seen as a major coup for the expansion team, and the Lions’ U.S. Soccer Development Academy squads showed marked improvement in the past year.

The team signed a homegrown player, goalkeeper Mason Stajduhar, and have several other top players coming up through the ranks, including Raul Aguilera Jr., Pierre da Silva and Asyed Sanchez.

Both coaches were very close with McDonough, who has since been hired by Atlanta United as the director of soccer operations. The moves leaves Orlando City’s academy somewhat in flux as they look to fill those two major roles ahead of the continuation of the academy season on Jan. 23.

Orlando City still also has to fill the assistant coach job on its senior staff after the club opted to cut ties with Ian Fuller. The Lions are also searching for a new director of soccer operations following the departure of Armando Carneiro, who left due to “personal reasons” after less than two months on the job in Orlando.